


Mistlefoe

by AstrophysicalBean



Category: Little Witch Academia
Genre: Alcohol Mentions, F/F, akko is kinda tipsy thats it, theyre married and happy and dumb, this is pure christmassy happiness okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 17:54:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,131
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28321218
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AstrophysicalBean/pseuds/AstrophysicalBean
Summary: Diana gets home on Christmas Eve to find that her wife tried to surprise her with a little mistletoe charm. Only, Akko may have messed it up slightly, and made the mistletoe slightly more... aggressive than usual.
Relationships: Diana Cavendish/Atsuko "Akko" Kagari
Comments: 4
Kudos: 91





	Mistlefoe

Diana stomped her boots off as she closed the front door behind her. It had been snowing steadily all day, so that by now, around 8pm, there was a substantial blanket of snow all over Wedinburgh, and she’d had to drive extra slowly on her way home from the clinic.

Still, she thought, it was nice. They hadn’t had snow on Christmas in a few years. She’d missed the feeling of waking up to a beautiful world of sparkling snow outside their window on Christmas morning.

Shaking off the snow that had melted on her shoulders, Diana dropped her keys in the bowl beside the door and eschewed herself of her boots, hat, and scarf, and began unbuttoning her coat. “Akko, I’m home!” She called into the apartment.

Dimly, she heard a _thud_ from the living room, a lot of fumbling, and the distinct sound of muttered curses, and she couldn’t help the smile that tugged at her tired face, and the warmth that budded in her stomach. “ _Dianaaaaaaaaa!_ ” Akko called back, and Diana laughed to herself.

She shrugged her coat the rest of the way off and took a step toward the coat hanger as her wife rounded the corner of the hallway at top speed, nearly crashing into the candy cane display wrapped in absurd amounts of sparkly gold tinsel that she herself had put up. Akko righted herself, righted the display, and took off running again down the hall, toward Diana, yelling, “ _Don’t move don’t move don’t moooooooove!_ ” She seemed to weave a nonsensical path down the hall—stumbling around certain points on the floor, bouncing off the walls, hopping from one space to another (all while, somehow, maintaining a run)—as if she were dodging an invisible laser field. And she was wearing only that gaudy, lewd Christmas sweater that she loved so much, and a Santa hat that sat slightly wonky on her head; no pants or socks.

(Though, no pants wasn’t entirely out of the ordinary, for Akko. She’d had a penchant for skirts that were much shorter than school regulation when they were teens, and—unfortunately for Diana’s concentration—hadn’t changed her beliefs since then.)

Still, the overall effect was rather puzzling.

Diana only had time to scrunch up her brows in bewilderment before Akko crashed into her, lips-first, nearly throwing her off balance entirely but pulling her back upright with a hand fisted in her sweater. Any confusion fled Diana’s mind in a heartbeat as Akko wrapped her other arm around her neck and stood on tiptoes to kiss her more fully, pressing her body right up against Diana’s. Diana reacted automatically, dropping her coat unceremoniously on the floor and curling her arms around her wife’s waist, letting out a small hum of contentment as Akko tilted her head and parted Diana’s lips with her tongue.

Diana could taste cinnamon on her wife’s breath, and maybe allspice: she tasted like Christmas cookies and eggnog, and the way she kissed made Diana’s toes curl.

After a long moment, Akko finally pulled away, and Diana chased her lips in a daze, breathless but _very_ interested in continuing this greeting. Akko chuckled and lowered herself back down from tiptoes, though still keeping her arms wrapped loosely around Diana’s neck, so that Diana had to slouch just slightly for her to reach. Glancing up at the ceiling, Akko muttered, “Ah, s’good,” for some reason, and that helped to break Diana from her stupor.

“What—?” Diana asked, following Akko’s gaze up the ceiling, where she saw—mistletoe, magic sparks still dancing about its leaves, but wilting now. It was shrinking back up to the ceiling and out of existence. Akko giggled, stumbling a little on her feet, and Diana had to tighten her grip on her waist to keep her upright. Ah, that explained the cinnamon and allspice. “Had a busy evening, darling?” She asked with a quirked eyebrow.

Akko’s giggles turned into a snort as she tried to fight the devilish grin threatening to split her lips. Diana took a moment to survey her glowing face: her cheeks were flushed, her deep brown eyes were slightly glassy, and she was positively radiant. Yeah, Diana was certain that if she checked the kitchen, the eggnog and whiskey would both have sizeable dents in them.

Akko nuzzled her face into Diana’s shoulder, then twisted up to peck her cheek. “Missed you,” she said.

Diana smiled, warmth like starbursts in her heart. “I missed you, too, love. I’m sorry I had to work on Christmas Eve.”

Akko waved her apology away with such vigour that she was thrown off balance slightly and stumbled on uneasy feet. “Nope! Nothin’ t’apologize for!”

“I hope you left some eggnog for me,” Diana teased Akko’s slight slurring. In return, Akko only grinned, unrepentant. Diana shook her head good-naturedly, looking up as if asking the heavens for help. “My wife, always the troublemaker.”

Akko stuck her tongue out. “Yeah, but you like it.”

“I _love_ it.”

As much as she never wanted to let Akko go, she _was_ rather tired after working a twelve-hour shift at the downtown medical clinic, and her feet were killing her. They had been busier than usual today, since the holidays invariably brought in a slew of additional patients with fingers separated from hands trying to carve the turkey, broken legs from hanging up lights on a slippery roof, and a hundred other holiday mistakes besides. She had been very much looking forward to coming home to her wife all day, to cuddle up with her on the couch with a mug of hot chocolate and a cheesy holiday movie. So, with a sigh, she unravelled her arms from Akko’s waist and made to move past her toward their room to change into pajamas.

“Wait!” Akko caught her by the wrist, pulling her bodily back to the front entrance.

“Akko?” Diana asked, confused, as her wife shuffled her by the shoulders, as though trying to position her very deliberately on the floor.

Akko seemed very focused on getting her in exactly the right spot. “Jus’ a moment,” she muttered, a very determined furrow in her brow.

“Is there some reason I can’t go into the apartment?” Diana asked. Akko bit her lip, looking down and to the left, and dropped her hands from Diana’s shoulders, clasping them in front of her in a very uncharacteristic manner. Diana looked at her flatly. “Akko.”

Akko sighed. “’S not like—I didn’t set the kitchen on fire or anything! That was only one time, an’ I’m way better with the toaster now! An’ therefore, moreover, I think you _ssssh_ ould remember, Your Honour, that I am your lawfully wedded wife an’ the light of your life an’ you would be empty if you divorced me an’ _no one_ wants to get divorced on Christmas that’s jus’ _not good Christmas decorum_ —”

“Akko,” Diana repeated, patient but tired. Akko was adorable when she was tipsy and rambling, and she loved her wife more than words could accurately express, but it was late, and she was tired, and she just wanted to know what was wrong so that they could fix it and go the fuck to bed.

Akko snapped her mouth shut with a _clip_ of the teeth, glancing up at Diana shyly. Nervous and sheepish, she muttered something under her breath that Diana couldn’t quite catch.

“What was that, darling?” Diana prompted.

Akko huffed, rolled her eyes, fidgeted with the bottom hem of her sweater—that damn sweater than she had been so proud of when she found it in a store in London a few years ago, when they were still dating. It was a nicely made sweater, sure; lovely and soft and fitting Akko just right, so that it was a comfortable amount of baggy, but not overly so, and falling to just past her bum if she pulled it all the way down. It was a pretty cream colour that complemented Akko perfectly, and it would have been the ideal holiday sweater, if the message printed very largely on the front in a bright red, homely cross-stitching font wasn’t “ ** _Tits the Season!_** ”

Diana hated it.

Well. Diana _pretended_ to hate it, but they both knew she found it adorable how much Akko loved it.

After a second of Akko fidgeting and Diana waiting, Akko dropped her sweater hem and looked up at the ceiling. “So like—I was sitting on the couch an’ jus’ having some _Me_ -time, y’know, an’ I thought, I wanna do something nice for my wife who is jus’ _so_ pretty an’ _so_ perfect an’ has to work on Christmas Eve an’ I miss her _so_ much, an’ I remembered this old charm Lotte taught me in like _first_ year for mistletoe that showers pretty sparks when you kiss underneath it an’ I was like ‘ _Oh, that’ll be perfect! Diana’ll love it an’ I’ll get to kiss her an’ I love kissing her,_ ’ except I think I had too much whiskey by then an’ I may’ve fucked up the charm jus’ like a li’l bit…”

Her entire monologue was a lot for Diana, who had been running around a busy clinic since 8am, stitching up crying children and arguing with crying adults, so it took her a moment for everything her wife said to register in her tired mind. After this moment, however, Diana crossed her arms over her chest, rested her chin in her palm, and squinted at her wife. “When you say you messed the charm up a bit, you mean…?”

Akko’s cheeks flushed even more, and she gave Diana a timid smile. “If someone steps underneath one an’ doesn’t kiss anyone, the mistletoe kinda… maybe… shoots… lasers… at them…”

Diana closed her eyes and took a slow breath through her nose. “And we can’t move from this very spot in the apartment because…?”

“Heh,” Akko started awkwardly, as if she could say much worse than ‘ _I drunkenly created mistletoe that shoots lasers at the un-kissed this holiday season_ ’. “ _Well_ … y’see… I _reeeaally_ like kissing you and I wanted t’make sure I got my magic’s worth, so…” She trailed off, looking down at her toes.

Diana followed the logical train of thought and finished her wife’s sentence. “So, you filled our apartment with magical mistletoe that we can’t even walk under unless we kiss, as it will shoot lasers at us if we don’t?”

Akko nodded, ashamed. “From what I could figure out, we have ‘bout a foot radius around the mistletoe to move, before it opens fire.”

“Is that what happened to your pants?” Diana asked.

Akko sunk somehow even further in her posture and nodded again. “The lasers… set them on fire… But not much! I saved ‘em! …Mostly…”

“The lasers set your pants on fire.”

“Basically…”

“And no counter-spells worked to get rid of it all?”

“If anything, that just seemed to make the lasers angry.”

“The Nine help me, my wife is an idiot,” Diana sighed, though kindly, without malice. She pulled her hair out of its ponytail and ran a slow hand through tangled blonde curls.

She could see the corners of Akko’s mouth tugging down into a frown, though much of it was concealed by her messy bangs falling over her face. Then, very softly, and sounding very timid and anxious, Akko asked, “…Are you mad?”

Diana looked at this woman standing before her: her wife, in good times and bad, just as they had promised each other two years ago in front of all their friends and family. And she looked… like a mess, honestly. Pants-less, lewd sweater hanging crookedly on her, falling off one shoulder and sleeves pushed up past her elbows. Her hair was tangled and messy, as if she had been dancing rather vigorously earlier (and, more likely than not, she probably had). Her cheeks were flushed, and her eyes were glassy, and she kept swaying on her feet despite the fact that they were standing still, like she couldn’t quite keep the ground right underneath her. The Santa hat sat at an awkward angle, almost slipping off, and her face was sad, worried. She had accidentally infested their apartment with laser-shooting mistletoe, and she was scared that she had made Diana mad.

Years ago, Diana would have turned her nose up at that—she would have thought herself above someone like this, better than her in every way. She would have berated Akko, told her to get herself together, this was no way a 25-year-old should act. She would have said that Akko had been one of the top graduates from Luna Nova Magical Academy and she should have been able to perform a simple mistletoe charm, even if she had been irresponsible enough to cast charms while inebriated.

But that was a version of Diana from so long ago, before everything. Before Akko had changed her, had taught her so much, had pulled her out of her self-imposed darkness and staunched high society and told her that she could _live_. Before she saw that Akko was the better one between the two of them in so many ways: Akko was kinder, sweeter, more open, and she made Diana want to be more like her every day. That version of Diana hadn’t felt loved in a very long time, and yet that version of Akko had decided to love her anyway.

Akko was perfect, in Diana’s eyes, and her heart glowed in her chest.

She pulled Akko forward, slipping her arm around Akko’s waist and cupping her face with the other hand. Akko looked up at her, tentatively, a little confused at what was happening but not wanting to jinx it. Slowly, Akko brought her hands up to rest lightly on Diana’s shoulders, allowing herself to be held close again. Only then did Diana brush her thumb over Akko’s cheek, trying to wipe away some of the worry in her wife’s eyes. “Akko, you are reckless, and impulsive, and ridiculous, and messy, and I love every single little thing about you, every single day, always,” she said, softly, leaning close enough to bump her nose against Akko’s. “Of course I’m not mad at you, love—not when you just wanted to do something sweet for me.”

“Really?” Akko asked, a look of disbelief on her beautiful face.

“Really,” Diana nodded, smiling.

Akko sighed, and let herself lean more fully against her wife, a small smile blossoming on her lips. She looked to her hands resting on Diana’s shoulders, and fiddled with the ends of Diana’s hair, as if needing to keep her hands busy. “I jus’… wanted t’do something nice for you… you’ve been working so hard, starting your res’dency, working extra hours, on top of setting up the Estate…”

The old Cavendish Manor that sat on the outskirts of Wedinburgh was a project they had both been working on for the past year. Diana had been born and grew up in the manor, and she and Akko had moved back there for a time, after graduating from Luna Nova, but no matter how hard they tried, they just couldn’t make it feel like home again. So they’d decided to move into an apartment above a baker’s shop in town and began working on opening Cavendish Manor to the public: both as a historical house, and as a medical clinic. It had been Akko’s idea first, and it was such a perfect representation of all Diana’s family stood for that Diana had been enraptured immediately. Akko had been heading the magical research and conservation side of things, aided by the years she’d spent obsessing over becoming a witch and learning even the most esoteric pieces of witch history and mythology. Diana had taken on the role of rebuilding the old clinic and updating it for modern medical practices, while also attending medical school herself and working at the clinic in town for her residency. It was tiring but so, _so_ rewarding, and she was looking forward to the day she could finally open the Bernadette Cavendish Medical Center to the public.

Diana smiled, moving her thumb from Akko’s cheek to twirl her pointer finger in a lock of Akko’s soft brown hair. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you, Akko,” she said, in a wonder.

Akko snuggled into her chest. “You’re you, an’ that’s all the deserving you need t’do.”

Sometimes, Diana couldn’t believe she’d gotten so lucky. “So, it’s Christmas Eve, and you’ve gone and booby-trapped our apartment.”

In reply, Akko gave her a wicked grin, and Diana saw the pun she’d set up a second too late.

“I mean, _tits the season_ am I right?” Akko said.

And Akko looked so proud of herself that Diana couldn’t even work up the heart to _pretend_ to scold her for it. She just sighed, and laughed, and fell in love all over again at the beaming grin on her wife’s face.

She glanced up quickly over Akko’s shoulder, looking for—yep, there, just a couple steps down the hall and a little bit to the left, nestled among the tinsel and lights that Akko had strung up everywhere, hung another innocent-looking piece of mistletoe. Looking back down to Akko, she tilted her wife’s chin up with a crooked finger and caught her grinning lips in another kiss, this one sweet, gentle; and at the same time, nudged her backward until they stood under the mistletoe. Akko didn’t seem to mind being shuffled around, though, as long as she got to slide her fingers through Diana’s hair and pull her closer.

Now it was Akko’s turn to look dazed, when Diana pulled away, and Diana was quite pleased with herself for this. She glanced up to make sure the mistletoe above them was shrinking. Satisfied that it was gone, Diana nodded and checked her watch. “Twenty past eight,” she noted. “Right, we’d better get a move on then, if we want to get to bed at a reasonable time.”

Akko blinked, confused. “Huh?”

Diana smirked, reaching up to fix the Santa hat atop her wife’s head. “Well, you said this apartment is full of killer mistletoe that can only be dispelled by kissing. So, by my estimate, we’ve got a lot of kissing ahead of us.”

A grin stretched itself across Akko’s face of its own accord. “Oh. Right.”

Diana let her hand trail down Akko’s arm with a teasing slowness that made Akko shiver. Then Diana stepped out of her space and walked down the hallway, further into the apartment, to the next bud of mistletoe that hung over the umbrella stand. She leaned back against the wall, right under the mistletoe, and fixed Akko with a simmering look. “So kiss me.”

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was inspired by my wonderful girlfriend, who told me about a popular Christmas fic trope in the Harry Potter fandom involving enchanted mistletoe. However, she neglected to tell me _how_ the mistletoe was supposed to be enchanted, so I had to ad lib. With lasers. Obviously. 
> 
> Anyway, hope you enjoyed! Happy Holidays! 
> 
> -Bean


End file.
